New Delhi: Cracking the whip, the government on Tuesday removed two top CBSE officials following alleged irregularities in the Class 12 digital evaluation system and ordered a probe by a high-powered committee to investigate how the national educational board procured these marking services.
Their replacements were announced late in the evening.
Simultaneously, a 17-year-old student from Jharkhand affected by the CBSE’s online marking system, appeared before a parliamentary panel where he pointed out the anomalies in the tendering process of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to select venders for online marking and put forth a set of questions for the board.
Sarthak Sidhant, who himself appeared in the board examination, presented a seven-page copy of his findings before the Parliamentary Committee for Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, chaired by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh.
The CBSE, meanwhile, said “malicious actors” attempted to disrupt services on its re-evaluation portal through a barrage of cyberattacks, including a denial-of-service attack that caused 1.5 million hits on the platform within two minutes and more than one lakh attempts at unauthorised file access.
The CBSE engulfed into a controversy after some class 12 students alleged that the scanned copies of their answer sheets uploaded by the board did not match their handwriting, raising concerns over possible answer-sheet mismatch in the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.
CBSE chairman Rahul Singh and secretary Himanshu Gupta were transferred and were replaced by senior bureaucrats Lokhande Prashant Sitaram and Varun Bhardwaj respectively.
Subsequently, the Cabinet Secretariat through a memorandum announced constitution of a one-member committee to inquire into matters relating to the procurement of services for the on-screen marking system by the CBSE.
The committee will be chaired by S Radha Chauhan, chairperson, Capacity Building Commission, the Cabinet Secretariat said.
Chauhan has been empowered to obtain the assistance of officials from other departments, as required, while the Capacity Building Commission will provide secretarial assistance to the panel.
The committee will submit its report to the Department of Personnel and Training within one month.
The memorandum addressed to Chauhan was shared with the Department of School Education and Literacy, and the Department of Personnel and Training.
Concerns were raised by students and parents over the implementation of the OSM system in the CBSE board examination process.
The board has faced criticism over technical glitches, payment failures and delays in the verification and re-evaluation process, prompting demands for greater transparency and accountability.
Sarthak’s presentation to the parliamentary panel was made in the presence of Rahul Singh, before he was shunted out of the CBSE chairmanship, and Secretary, School Education, Sanjay Kumar, along with other officials of the Ministry of Education and the board.
The CBSE handed over a report to the panel members, presenting their side on the problems faced by students, and assured the MPs that the glitches that appeared on its portal have since been rectified and students now have time till June 6 to apply for re-evaluation of their answersheets.
Amid the row over the CBSE’s OSM system, the committee had summoned top officials of the board and the Ministry of School Education to discuss the issue of using OSM in the Class 12 board exams and the problems faced by students consequently.
The panel also discussed applying the three-language formula in Classes 9 and 10 with the education ministry officials.
On whether he was satisfied with the CBSE’s replies, panel chairman Digvijaya Singh said, “That is for the committee to decide.”
He did not respond to the three-language formula issue either, saying, “I believe the matter is sub-judice.”
“The committee has always been looking at the issues of students and their problems. This is exactly what the committee has done,” Singh told reporters when asked about the meeting.
Meanwhile, the CBSE said “malicious actors” attempted to disrupt services on its re-evaluation portal through a barrage of cyberattacks, including a denial-of-service attack that caused 1.5 million hits on the platform within two minutes and more than one lakh attempts at unauthorised file access.
The board said the portal is currently supporting over 8,000 concurrent users, and more than 16,000 students have successfully completed their submissions as of 3 pm.
“While thousands of students accessed the CBSE re-evaluation portal today, malicious actors attempted to disrupt services through a barrage of cyberattacks,” the board said on X.
“The most recent being a denial of service attack attempt causing 1.5 million hits on the portal within a matter of 2 minutes and more than 1 lakh attempts of unauthorised file access,” it added.
Based on student feedback, the CBSE said it has further refined the platform, including extending session time limits, to make the process more convenient and seamless.
